Giancarlo Frosio

Giancarlo F. Frosio is a Non-Residential Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. Previously he was the Intermediary Liabilty fellow with Stanford CIS. Giancarlo is a qualified attorney with a doctoral degree (S.J.D.) in intellectual property law from Duke University Law School. Additionally, he holds an LL.M. with emphasis in intellectual property law from Duke Law School, an LL.M. in information technology and telecommunications law from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, and a law degree from Università Cattolica in Milan. His research focuses on copyright law, digitization, history of creativity, public domain, open access, Internet and user based creativity, intermediary liability of Information Service providers, network information economy, access to knowledge (A2K), and identity politics.

From 2010 to 2013, Giancarlo served as the Deputy Director and Lecturer of the LL.M. in intellectual property law jointly organized by WIPO and the University of Turin. He is also a faculty associate of the Nexa Research Center for Internet and Society in Turin, where he acted as Chief Editor and author of the Final Report of COMMUNIA, the European Thematic Network on the Digital Public Domain funded by the European Commission within the eContentplus framework. Recently, he also served as a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. The post was one of the research projects of the new Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) funded by the UK Research Councils. He is the author of numerous legal articles and publications. His book “Cumulative Creativity: From the Oral Formulaic Tradition to Digital Remix” is soon to be published.

A few days ago, a Brazilian judge ordered telecoms to block access to WhatsApp on the Brazilian territory for lack of cooperation in a criminal investigation. A few hours later, a superior tribunal invalidated the initial blocking order and reinstated access to Whatsapp. Since the contours of this latest Brazilian Whatsapp affair appeared quite blurry, you may find a full report of the case below.

Since the enactment of the first safe harbours and liability exemptions for online intermediaries, market conditions have radically changed. Originally, intermediary liability exemptions were introduced to promote an emerging Internet market. Do safe harbours for online intermediaries still serve innovation? Should they be limited or expanded? These critical questions—often tainted by protectionist concerns—define the present intermediary liability conundrum.

This article discusses the proposed introduction in EU law of an obligation for hosting providers to conclude licencing agreements with copyright holders and ensure their functioning by taking effective technological measures—such as content id technologies—to prevent copyright infringement on online platforms.

In imposing a strict liability regime for alleged copyright infringement occurring on YouTube, Justice Salomão of the Brazilian Superior Tribunal de Justiça stated that “if Google created an ‘untameable monster,’ it should be the only one charged with any disastrous consequences generated by the lack of control of the users of its websites.” In order to tame the monster, the Brazilian Superior Court had to impose monitoring obligations on YouTube. This was not an isolated case.

As part of its Digital Single Market Strategy, the European Commission would like to introduce vertical regulations, replacing — or better conflicting with — the well-established eCommerce Directive horizontal intermediary liability regime. An upcoming revision of the Audio-visual Media Services Directive would ask platforms to put in place measures to protect minors from harmful content and to protect everyone from incitement to hatred.

(with Christophe Geiger and Oleksandr Bulayenko) This article discusses the proposed introduction in EU law of neighbouring rights for press publishers for the digital uses of their publications. This proposal is included in the European Commission’s Draft Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market of 14 September 2016, which forms an important part of the ongoing reform of copyright at EU level.

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"Frosio states, "By their nature, Internet services are inherently global. But Internet companies face a real challenge understanding how those global regimes might regulate the services they offer to the public. This uncertainty can hurt users by potentially scaring companies away from providing innovative new services in certain markets. Additionally, companies may unnecessarily limit what users can do online, or engage in censorship-by-proxy to avoid uncertain retribution under unfamiliar laws.""

Professor Eric Goldman from Santa Clara Law School will join our conversation and present developments in US internet intermediary law. In particular, we will discuss Section 230 of the of the Communications Decency Act, intermediary liability and freedom of expression. We will consider recent questions surfacing before U.S. courts, such as whether Twitter should be liable for terrorist propaganda.